


Stuck on the Ground

by Marmala



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Feeling of drawning, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26954122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marmala/pseuds/Marmala
Summary: Minato performs the Reaper Death Seal Jutsu and knows that he's going to die.Then, he wakes up.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Namikaze Minato, Hatake Kakashi/Namikaze Minato, Namikaze Minato & Uzumaki Kushina, Namikaze Minato & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 10
Kudos: 97





	Stuck on the Ground

Minato opens his eyes and feels numb for one second.

Then everything comes crashing down.

When he was young Jiraiya-sensei took him to a ninja who lived in the highest part of a mountain, one of the strongest sensors alive, and they asked him to train Minato, who was six and not able to function anymore because of the range his sensory abilities had reached.

The ninja said no for eight consecutive days, Jiraiya asked for nine. They spend almost four months with him, and Minato was able to sleep again only after the first. He taught him everything he knew to damp his senses, to only focus on what he wanted or needed. To single out the different chakra signatures, to identified what every inflection meant and to read them, to use them to paint the picture of what the other person was thinking.

The day the old man died Minato felt it deep within his bones, could almost felt the earth stomping a bit under his feet.

Now is like he never took any training. His senses reach every corner of the village, bumping into every person and drinking their pain, their sorrow, their fear. He notices himself going under, feels thick heavy water surrounding him, pulling him down, feels it wrapping around his arms and shoulders, his legs, his torso.

He fights to untie himself but it’s futile: when he get his left arm free, the water is grabbing his ankle and creeping up his leg, when he concentrates on dislodging himself there, his left arm is again wrapped up the shoulder.

The water tries to reach his neck, but he stirs like crazy and manages to keep his face clean, his nose and his mouth. He shakes his whole body but is losing mobility on his limbs, he knows it’s only a matter of time until it covers him completely.

Minato searches desperately for his anchor, he looks for Kushina’s chakra, but it’s long gone and he can’t remember the other techniques, can’t keep himself above water, he’s going down.

Maybe Kushina is at the bottom and that’s why he can’t reach her.

He should go with her.

He stops fighting.

He lets all those emotions and feelings that doesn’t belong to him crush him down, like a stone falling on his stomach and taking away all the air. He can’t see, can’t hear, can’t taste anything but pain, anguish, fear.

And then.

And then there’s a bolt of lightning.

It stars at his toes and goes through his body to the tip of every single one of the hairs on his head.

Minato grabs the lighting and feels it burn his hand, the spark beginning to disintegrate his bindings and his arms are free, his legs are free but he’s already so tired that he can’t find the strength to swim to the surface. He’s free but Kushina might still be waiting at the bottom, he should go to her first, besides it’s easier to keep sinking.

Something heavy and light at the same time lands on his chest and white light explodes from that point. The water misses a bit of its thickness and Minato begins to push up, to go to the surface, he thinks he can hear something but it’s so vague, so far that he’s not sure. But it sounds like home.

When he finally gets his head out of the water the first thing his exhausted senses can catch is the crying of a baby.

Of his baby.

All of him recognizes him. Naruto. His son. His precious son.

He’s laying on Minato’s chest bawling with the strength of tiny new lungs. Minato takes a second to lift his left arm and lay his hand on the back of the baby. Naruto calms down with the contact and that fills Minato’s heart with warmth, the water retracting more and more. He’s needed here, the bottom will have to wait.

Another spark of lighting pinches his right bicep and Minato opens his eyes to look for the source of it. He’s not surprised to find his former student Kakashi at his side, one hand on Minato’s arm and face bared.

“You were gone.” Kakashi says, voice shy and low. He’s still wearing Anbu gear that’s torn at some places, burned in others; “You woke up and then you were gone.” He sounds scared, which is something that Minato normally doesn’t associate with Kakashi, “Sandaime-sama started to place barriers to keep everything out but you broke through all of them.”

Minato’s eyes are heavy but he can’t tear them away from Kakashi’s face who looks distressed and anxious like he never saw before. Kakashi struggled so much with showing emotions that seeing them all on display is a rare occurrence. 

“I went to the nursery and brought Naruto to you,” Kakashi keeps saying, his eyes now at the baby sleeping on Minato’s chest, going up and down with each breath he takes, “he was also crying really hard, so I brought him here and you came back. Naruto got you back and stopped crying. Please don’t be mad that I grabbed your son.”

“…u grabbed my son?” Minato speaks with barely any sound; his throat feels raw and dry.

Kakashi hurries to the other side of the room and comes back with a glass of water. He helps the Hokage take a few sips, careful not to wake up the baby.

“How did you grab my son?” he asks again, this time with more force, but still gentle because Kakashi looks more like a child than ever, his visible eye widening at his words.

“What?” he asks, confused.

“Show me how you grabbed Naruto” Minato clarifies.

His former student still look puzzled by the request but lifts his arms anyway and put them together forming a sort of oval, where a baby would fit perfectly with their head correctly supported (he knows this ‘cause the was paying close attention to the books about baby care that Uchiha Mikoto lend him and Kushina)

Minato smiles and his eyes begin to sting with unshed tears, “you **_held_** my son, Kakashi.” He corrects gently, “you held him and brought him to me. I could never be upset for that. You knew exactly what I needed.” He lifts his hand and cups the teenager’s cheek, “thank you.” He breathes, feeling so lucky to have him here, next to him and Naruto, to being able to count with Kakashi always understanding, always knowing with his genius brain what would soothe Minato.

Kakashi’s lips form a small smile.

“Sandaime-sama went to greet Jiraiya-sama now, he’ll be back with him in a few hours.” He tells him, looking at Naruto again.

Minato has many questions and he will ask them all to Hiruzen whenever he’ll get the chance. The last he remembers is the cold hand of the reaper, the pressure of Kushina’s impaled body in front of his and the heat of the Kyuubi’s hatred. He doesn’t know what happened for him to be alive. He knows that the demon fox is sealed inside his baby, can feel the throb of chakra under his fingers where they meet Naruto’s back, but why the reaper didn’t take Minato’s soul after? How everything ended?

He’ll have time for that later.

Now, helped by his former student, he sits a bit more on the bed and cradles his son better on his arms, face up so he can look at him.

He’s the most gorgeous baby Minato ever laid eyes on.

His most precious person.

Naruto didn’t get the Uzumaki Hair, instead he has blonde tiny locks and three thin scars on each cheek, the results for growing inside the Kyuubi’s Jinchuriki. 

His eyes are filled with tears when he looks up to meet Kakashi, who still hasn’t covered his face and Minato nearly thanks him for that.

“He looks just like you,” Kakashi says, looking at Naruto, “the poor thing.” He adds, almost mischievously. The smile that takes his lips is one younger and carefree, ignorant of the recent events, just making fun of his ex-teacher like any teenager would.

Minato laughs at that, a sound that it’s roughly ripped out of his stomach; Naruto stirs a bit and half-opens one blue eye that fixes on Minato.

Next to him, Kakashi stops breathing and looks away, like the sight of father and son staring at each other is too much to bear. It probably is.

A few heart beats passes before Kakashi speaks again, “Minato,” he begins, using his name like he said he would since the day he became Anbu and swore to protect the Hokage with his life, “I’m here for you. For both of you,” he clarifies, like Minato doesn’t already know that Kakashi would die protecting his son. “Things are going to get rough, and you must know you’re not alone. I swore loyalty to you many years ago and now I also swear it to Naruto.”

Minato knows that tomorrow Kakashi will go back to being the uninterested, indifferent Jounin that pretends to not have a heart because it’s easier and stares at life trough the corner of his eye.

But now, he’s open and showing him a side that never gest to see the light. He’s offering himself to Minato so he and Naruto can take whatever they need.

Minato smiles wetly trough tears and nods with his head once, accepting everything because he was drowning moments ago and now it feels like he’s taking a breath for the first time since Kushina went into labor.

Kakashi moves to get a chair and drags it to the side of Minato’s bed, sits and takes one of Jiraiya’s books that was on the table, next to the abandoned glass of water.

Minato drinks his features while he reads.

He doesn’t tell him that Naruto brought him back, but Kakashi freed him.

Kakashi’s still too young and Minato’s life just took a one hundred eighty degrees turn, he has so many conflicted feelings inside, Kushina is gone and that is a bleeding wound on his heart that will take time to heal, if it ever heals at all.

So, he’ll revisit this in a few years, when he’s ready.

Now he has Naruto on his chest and Kakashi next to him.

Everything is as good as it could be.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Thank you so much for reading.  
> I've been reading all the amazing works ao3 has to offer for years, and this is the first time I post anything, so I'm incredibly nervous.  
> If there are any pointers that you wanna give me, I'll recieve them gladly, especially in terms of grammar. English isn't my first lenguage and I don't have anyone who can proof read this, so I hope I didn't made a lot of mistakes. Also I hope I didn't made anyone very OOC, I'm very concerned about that too.  
> Thank you again and hope you have a great day!!


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